Easiest way to lose your intellectual property? When your departing employee walks your intellectual property right out the door. It happens far too often and the insider threat you thought of as a hypothetical? Well, it is now a reality. This is what apparently happened to Zynga. Zynga (yes the game company is still alive and kicking) alleges in their …

Patients in Manitoba are receiving notification from their healthcare providers, that their personal and sensitive information has been lost or inappropriately accessed. As all who have responsibility for the security of information, the insider threat is very real. Often times we associate the insider threat to be associated with the actions of nefarious individual. As you’ll read below, the breaches …

On 24 October 2016, Wengui Yan, an Arkansas resident, an employee of the USDA Dale Bumpers National Rice Research Center since 1996, and a naturalized US citizen originally from the PRC, successfully negotiated a plea-bargain with the Kansas US Attorney in his agro espionage case. Yan and his co-defendant, Weiqiang Zhang, PRC citizen, facilitated the theft of genetic rice from the …

In a prime example of insider threat, becomes insider theft, we saw the FBI arrest and the Department of Justice file a criminal complaint against Ralph Mandil, an employee of an unidentified distributor of “As Seen on TV” products (we believe to be Corvex Cookware). Mandil faces two federal charges: Theft of Trade Secrets and Wire Fraud. A Ralph Mandil’s, LinkedIn Profile identifies him …

The headline read: Selling Secrets to the Russians? Jason Bourne Fan arrested in spy drama of his own. Thus implying the motivation for Gregory Allen Justice was his sick wife, a job at which he felt unappreciated and a fascination with cinematic secret operatives such as Jason Bourne and James Bond. There’s more to the story. When he was arrested for what the …

On 12 December 2013, a criminal complaint was filed by the United States Attorney in the Kansas District, petitioning for the arrest of two individuals, with ties to China, for the theft of trade secrets from Ventria Bioscience and other companies. Subsequently, these same two individuals were indicted for “conspiracy to steal trade secrets” by a federal grand jury on …

Espionage in the heartland of the United States? For two-plus years, perhaps for as many as four, a different type of harvesting has been occurring throughout the heartland of the United States. According to the criminal complaint (see below), filed by the United States Attorney, Nicholas A. Klinefeldt, a Chinese company, Kings Nower Seed, and their personnel have been harvesting more …